I’m Fixing to Get Me a Dog

I’m fixing to get me a dog.

I’ve had a few dogs in my life. The first one I remember was Old Bill. He was a Black and Tan Hound Dog. He may have had a little mix of another breed in him, but he looked enough like one and acted enough like one to be called one. Kind of like some people I have met.

Old Bill shared a lot of my secrets when I was a young sprout. He traipsed through the woods with me, too, and he could sniff out a dangerous viper long before I would step on it.

He was a talented dog, but his particular best talent was squirrel hunting, and he made me some money with that talent. Sometimes on Saturday mornings in the fall, as a team, Old Bill and I would hire ourselves out to squirrel hunters. We usually got fifty cents for the morning, and was glad for the opportunity to earn that much money. Plus, if we got a bunch of ‘em, the hunter would give me a couple to take home to my momma so she could fry them up and make some squirrel gravy.

My favorite hunter was Mister Leotis Crabtree. Sometimes he would tip me a quarter. He was named after a famous relative who was a corporal in the Confederate Army, and got famous because he could do magic tricks. They say he was real good at it, too.

In fact, he was so good at magic that early one morning before daylight he made himself disappear from the army and reappear two years later in California.

Old Bill got real old and one day he just disappeared, kind of like Mister Crabtree’s famous relative. My daddy explained to me that Old Bill was so old that he probably just got tired of living and went off to one of his favorite places and died.

That was kind of hard for me to accept at my tender young age, but I remember my daddy had done a good job of helping me understand.
There were some in between, but the last dog I had was Poochie. She was a girl dog, a Pitt Bull, white with liver spots; one that covered her left eye. She was a sweet doggie and smarter than some folks I know. Unfortunately, Poochie had a terminal illness and died young. When they say the good die young, I know it was true in Poochie’s case.

Sometimes memories are better than reality. Instead of getting a new dog I’m fixing to just remember my old ones.